Friday, August 31, 2007

Museum Gottwaldianum

garland of flowers


wunderkammer showroom


2 sets of medical instruments


gastro-intestinal system


turtle anatomy without organs


turtle anatomy with organs


sea shells


nautilus shell


3 shells


starfish


fish and squid


beaver


beaver skull



moths and butterflies


nautilus lamp




detail of swine
"Christoph Gottwald(t) (1636-1700) was a German physician in Danzig and created one of the largest cabinets of curiosities of his time. His collection was purchased by Tsar Peter the Great together with the famous collections of Seba and Ruysch. Like more of Gottwald's works, publication was realized long after the author's death when the publisher Raspe purchased the manuscripts."

Gottwald commissioned the Polish baroque painter, Daniel Schultz the Younger, to render drawings he made himself of the contents of his wunderkammer into engravings, which was undertaken in about 1665. A handwritten inventory of the shells, anatomical specimens and marine creatures accompanied the engravings in a 1714 compendium of which only three copies were made. The copper plates were obtained by Raspe, a conchology enthusiast, and a German version of the 'Museum Gottwaldianum' first appeared in 1782.

The illustrations above come from one of the original 1714 prints and are online at the University of Strasbourg (huge images available). There are perhaps forty further plates - many of them shells or anatomical deformities. There is little in the way of background information online. See: i, ii, and a review of conchological literature [link updated Oct '08] by Peter S Dance [pdf], courtesy of the Conchological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. [previously]

6 comments :

pita ou franck said...

Magnifique! wonderfull big big scans
thanks for all the great an monumental job you doing here
:-)patricia

bioephemera said...

Wow. You are unbelievable. Are you sure you don't have a troupe of oompa-loompas finding all this stuff for you?? How do you do it?

peacay said...

How do you do it?

3:1 weedkiller:battery acid, injected direcly into Port 80.

Happy bioephemerversary!

elfelix said...

Man!
Thanks for all this stuff!
It´s wonderful!!!

ortelius said...

for further online-reading (with some pics):www.kunstkammer.at - its in german with links to french and english sites
the Herzog August Library has this nice piece of literature online: http://diglib.hab.de/drucke/t-207-4f-helmst/start.htm
hope you like it
so long

peacay said...

Thanks Ortelius! Both great links (which I may plunder in the near future).

That caused me to have a look...
wunderkammer versus kunstkammer versus 'cabinet of curiosities'. Hmm.
[NYPL have a good link list]

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